Who had been in that driveway?

Back at the Roundhouse, Byrne ran an NCIC and PCIC check on everyone they had encountered. Everyone of interest, that is. Frank Wells, DeJohn Withers, Brian Parkhurst, Charles Noone, Sean Brennan. The National Crime Information Center is a computerized index of criminal justice information available to federal, state, and local law enforcement and other criminal justice agencies. The Philadelphia Crime Information Center was the local version.

Only Dr. Brian Parkhurst yielded results.

At the end of their tour they met with Ike Buchanan to give him a status report.

“Guess who has a sheet?” Byrne asked.

For some reason, Jessica didn’t have to give it too much thought. “Dr. Cologne?” she replied.

“You got it,” Byrne said. “Brian Allan Parkhurst,” he began, reading from the computer printout. “Thirty-five years old, single, currently residing on Larchwood Street in the Garden Court area. Got his BS at John Carroll University in Ohio, his MD at Penn.”

“What are the priors?” Buchanan asked. “Jaywalking?”

“You ready for this? Eight years ago he was charged with kidnapping. But it was no-billed.”

“Kidnapping?” Buchanan asked, a little incredulous.

“He was a counselor at a high school and it turns out he was having an affair with one of the seniors. They went away for a weekend without telling the girl’s parents, the parents called the police, and Dr. Parkhurst was picked up.”

“Why was it no-billed?”

“Lucky for the good doctor, the girl turned eighteen the day before they left, and claimed that she went along willingly. The DA had to drop all charges.”

“And where did this happen?” Buchanan asked.

“In Ohio. The Beaumont School.”

“What is the Beaumont School?”

“A Catholic girls school.”

Buchanan looked at Jessica, then at Byrne. He knew what they both were thinking.

“Let’s tread lightly on this,” Buchanan said. “Dating young girls is a long way from what was done to Tessa Wells. This is going to be a high-profile case, and I don’t want Monsignor Brass Balls up my ass for harassment.”

Buchanan was referring to Monsignor Terry Pacek, the very vocal, very telegenic, some would say militant spokesman for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Pacek oversaw all media relations concerning Philadelphia’s Catholic churches and schools. He had butted heads with the department many times during the Catholic priest sex scandal in 2002, usually coming out on top in the public relations battles.You didn’t want to go to war with Terry Pacek unless you had a full quiver.

Before Byrne could press the issue of shadowing Brian Parkhurst, his phone rang. It was Tom Weyrich.

“What’s up?” Byrne asked.

Weyrich said: “There’s something you better see.”

...

The medical examiner’s office was a gray monolith on University Avenue. Of the six thousand or so cases of death that were reported in Philadelphia every year, nearly half required a postmortem, and all were performed in this building.

Byrne and Jessica entered the main autopsy theater at just after six o’clock. Tom Weyrich wore his apron and a look of deep concern. Tessa Wells was laid out on one of the stainless steel tables, her skin a pallid gray, the powder blue sheet pulled up to her shoulders.

“I’m ruling this a homicide,” Weyrich said, stating the obvious. “Spinal shock due to a transected cord.” Weyrich slipped an X-ray into a light board. “The transection occurred between C5 and C6.”

His initial assessment had been correct. Tessa Wells had died from a broken neck.

“At the scene?” Byrne asked.

“At the scene,” Weyrich said.

“Any bruising?” Byrne asked.

Weyrich returned to the body and indicated the two small contusions on Tessa Wells’s neck.

“This is where he grabbed her, then snapped her head to the right.”

“Anything usable?”

Weyrich shook his head. “The doer wore latex gloves.”

“What about the cross on her forehead?” The blue, chalky material on Tessa’s forehead was faint, but still visible.

“I’ve swabbed it,” Weyrich said. “It’s at the lab.”

“Any signs of a struggle? Defensive wounds?”

“None,” Weyrich said.

Byrne considered this. “If she was alive when she was brought into that basement, why was there no sign of a fight?” he asked. “Why weren’t her legs and thighs covered with cuts?”

“We found a small quantity of midazolam in her system.”

“What is that?” Byrne asked.

“Midazolam is similar to Rohypnol. We’re starting to see it show up on the streets more and more these days because it’s still colorless and odorless.”

Jessica knew, through Vincent, that the use of Rohypnol as a date rape drug was beginning to slack off due to the fact that it was now being formulated to turn blue when dropped into liquids, thereby tipping off the unsuspecting prey. But leave it to science to replace one horror with another.

“So you’re saying our doer slipped this midazolam into a drink?”

Weyrich shook his head. He lifted the hair on the right side of Tessa Wells’s neck. There was a small puncture wound. “She was injected with it. Small-bore needle.”

Jessica and Byrne found each other’s eyes. This changed things. Putting a drug in a drink was one thing.A lunatic roaming the streets with a hypodermic needle was quite another. He wasn’t concerned with finessing his victims into his web.

“Is it particularly difficult to administer properly?” Byrne asked.

“It would take some knowledge not to hit muscle,” Weyrich said. “But it’s nothing that couldn’t be learned with a little practice. An LPN could do it without too much of a problem. On the other hand, you can make a nuclear weapon with what you can find on the Internet these days.”

“What about the drug itself?” Jessica asked.

“Ditto the Internet,” Weyrich said. “I get Canadian spam for OxyContin every ten minutes. But the presence of midazolam doesn’t explain the lack of defensive wounds. Even sedated, the natural instinct is to fight back. There wasn’t enough of the drug in her system to totally incapacitate her.”

“So what are you saying?” Jessica asked.

“I’m saying that there’s something else. I’m going to have to run more tests.”

Jessica noticed a small evidence bag on the table. “What is this?”